Troubled waters

This is what your favorite river may look like after some steady rain. A way too strong current. Your streamer disappears in a murky substance that bears only a vague resemblance to water. It's more like soup. A no-fish soup. Not much hope of catching a pike today. Not here. But there's always somewhere else. And somewhere else paid off this time. After a few casts a fairsized pike hit the streamer like a freight train. Released of course, so it may get to the next station on schedule.

Erik

Close, but no blank

When we announced our second fishing- and testing day on this blog, we advised you to sue us if we would come home with a skunk. Well, it was pretty darn close, but Erik and Sander saved the day by catching not much more than a meter of pike together. Here's Sander's half:

There were other catches though, but they don't quite impress on the CV of a pike fly fishing team that's about to compete on an international platform:

And here's one of the excuses:

The other excuse is that our two sponsor-visits put some mayor cuts into our fishing time. But they were quite interesting and productive, so more about that later.

The downsides of fishing solo

Fishing alone can be nice every once in a while. You can do what you want, go where you want, fish the way you want and quit when you want. Also, there's no buddy that annoyingly catches all the fish right in front of you, spooks all the fish or - even worse - frustrates, just by being there, the possibility to brag about your catches the way you normally would do.

But there are downsides too. There's no one to talk to, no one to share the excitement with, no one who will share his sandwiches with you and no walking fly shop to provide you with the stuff you once again forgot to bring yourself. And what about pictures? Who's there to prove it when you actually do catch something? Or even worse, a whopper? Who's there to convince the unbelievers that there's big pike even in ridiculously small waters?

In my case, the answer was: no one. Well there was someone around, but she obviously thought I wanted a picture of myself with the building and considered the pike to be nothing more than a pet and of no significance at all:

Actually, it was quite an interesting catch. The small canal this one came from is only 30-40 cm. deep, and the area to effectively swim and feed only a couple of hundred meters. The fish just cannot possibly go anywhere else and couldn't come from anywhere else. I knew it had to be there, but couldn't catch it before (or even find it, for that matter). But this time it was different.

In a shallow canal like this, when there's no wind, the big fish often will show themselves: you'll see a wave from shore to shore rolling through the canal, which really adds to the fishing excitement. When I first spotted the wave I thought it was just a big bream or carp. But those fish normally cruise in groups, and this really seemed to be just one fish. I still didn't think of a pike though, as they usually are quite static. But what the heck, I gave it a cast anyway.

The fish didn't hesitate for a single second, swallowed the 15 inch streamer and put the small canal on fire. A funny thing about these waters is that the fish doesn't have much options when it wants to take off. So the fish swam back and forth and the only thing I had to do was follow. And hey, it's still a pike and not a carp. But nevertheless, it did put up quite a fight before it surrendered.

And then, luckily, this nice woman walked by to make a photograph of the fact that I actually have been in front of that awe-inspiring building. And when it comes to the fish, well, you know the drill: "yeah sure, prove to me there was another half........."

Next on the agenda

On tuesday 24 november we're going to visit two possible sponsors and do some pike fishing along the way. The weather will be no excuse for a blank:

 

Excellent! Low pressure and a warm front passing (now that's perfect piking weather without irony). Top that with a nice breeze to put the sponsor rod to a true challenge and things can't possibly go wrong. So sue us if we come home with a skunk.....

The first training session, part 2: Urban Angling

At the end of the first TDF fishing-day, city folks Sander and Henk-Jan took the guys from the countryside Harmen-Jan and Erik to some totally different fishing grounds: urban angling in the city. Granted, the scenery doesn't quite match the picturesk Dutch polders (let alone the beautiful Baltic), but strolling around and casting streamers in an urban setting sure has it's own charms and challenges. For instance, the typical, somewhat nostalgic smell of cow-poo in the polders is more than made up for by the huge amounts of dog-shit you'll undoubtedly encounter on the banks of urban fishing waters (hence the expression "Frolic Walking" by the Dutch flyfisherman Erik de Noorman, which is now widely used as a synonym for fishing in cities and towns).

Also, the catches will be far more diverse than in the countryside. Not only is there a good chance at a decent pike, but shopping carts, bicycles, condoms, plastic bags, pedestrians, cyclists and even cars are also a frequent and inevitable target species.

Erik (left) at a hot spot near a bridge, only seconds before........

The first training session, part 1: polders

Lured by bold stories from Sander and Henk-Jan about the great fall pike fishing in the 'polders' around Utrecht, Harmen-Jan and Erik felt they needed some decent proof of that. Also, the first sponsor rod arrived and required some serious testing. So a couple of days later, the first Dutch Four Training Session took place in Utrecht.

After Harmen-Jan and Erik traveled half the country to reach these promised rich fishing grounds, the first words of welcome from Sander and Henk-Jan contained a sneaky disclaimer. Sunday is the worst day of the week for pike fishing, they said. The waters are crowded with other fishermen, and so they were on saturday. At the end of the weekend, it would take a very stupid (meaning: small) pike to charge yet another fluffy, feathery thingy passing by.

And so it turned out te be. Perfect, because it gave us an excellent excuse for our obvious lack of fishing skills. We did catch some pike though and had lots of fun along the way.

Test-casting a sponsor rod over and over again eventually annoyed the hell out of...........

And then there were four......

In august 2009, when everyone in Holland was minding their own summer business, a small post appeared on a popular Dutch fly fishing internet forum called Prikbord (pronounced Prick Board, which it usually isn't). It was a letter from Simon Graham about the pike fly fishing tournament he is organizing in may 2010 in Finland. Harmen-Jan (now our Team Captain) and not much later Sander ("Arubaman") jumped on it like hungry pike and began mailing each other about forming a Dutch team. They both selected another candidate, and so Erik and Henk-Jan came aboard.

A quick meeting was arranged at a Van der Valk road restaurant ("valk" is Dutch for falcon, which explains the toucan in the logo of the restaurant), where Harmen-Jan unfolded a slick plan to find sponsors for this project. And now, a few gigabites of e-mails, hours of phonecalls and already some testfishing later, we feel it's time to put ourselves and the project online. We could of course have waited until all would have been set and there were no more loose ends, but we think it fits much better in the concept of a blog to keep things dynamic and make this a true report of our project, from the beginning until the end.

In Holland we can fish for pike almost all winter long, so stay tuned for plenty of pike-porn, fishing reports, video's, tech-talk, colums, weird stories and other stuff that has (or sometimes has not) anything to do with pike fly fishing. By the way, we congratulate (and thank!) Vosseler to be the first sponsor link we put on this blog. Much more about that (and rods!) later....